Excavations at Tell Khaiber in southern Iraq by the Ur Region Archaeological Project have revealed a substantial building (hereafter the Public Building) dating to the mid-second millennium b.c. The results are significant for the light they shed on Babylonian provincial administration, particularly of food production, for revealing a previously unknown type of fortified monumental building, and for producing a dated archive, in context, of the little-understood Sealand Dynasty. The project also represents a return of British field archaeology to long-neglected Babylonia, in collaboration with Iraq's State Board for Antiquities and Heritage. Comments on the historical background and physical location of Tell Khaiber are followed by discussion of the form and function of the Public Building. Preliminary analysis of the associated archive provides insights into the social milieu of the time. Aspects of the material culture, including pottery, are also discussed.

Biodegradable polymers with high mechanical strength, flexibility and optical transparency, optimal degradation properties and biocompatibility are critical to the success of tissue engineered devices and drug delivery systems. In this work, microfluidic devices have been fabricated from elastomeric scaffolds with tunable degradation properties for applications in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. Most biodegradable polymers suffer from short half life resulting from rapid and poorly controlled degradation upon implantation, exceedingly high stiffness, and limited compatibility with chemical functionalization. Here we report the first microfluidic devices constructed from a recently developed class of biodegradable elastomeric poly(ester amide)s, poly(1,3-diamino-2-hydroxypropane-co-polyol sebacate)s (APS), showing a much longer and highly tunable in vivo degradation half-life comparing to many other commonly used biodegradable polymers. The device is molded in a similar approach to that reported previously for conventional biodegradable polymers, and the bonded microfluidic channels are shown to be capable of supporting physiologic levels of flow and pressure. The device has been tested for degradation rate and gas permeation properties in order to predict performance in the implantation environment. This device is high resolution and fully biodegradable; the fabrication process is fast, inexpensive, reproducible, and scalable, making it the approach ideal for both rapid prototyping and manufacturing of tissue engineering scaffolds and vasculature and tissue and organ replacements.

This desktop review has been conducted, from the reviewers' perspective, to evaluate the merits, advantages and disadvantages of adopting the 6th edition of the American Medical Association (AMA6) Guides for the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment. The reviewers do not make any recommendation as to whether AMA6 should or should not be adopted by any particular jurisdiction, but rather provide comment from the perspective of a critical but constructive appraisal of published material. The observations reported represent the opinions of the reviewers, based on their appraisal of selected sections of AMA4, AMA5 and AMA6 and the associated literature. AMA6 has become surrounded by considerable controversy. At the time of review, at least two jurisdictions in the United States have voted against adoption of AMA6. While the paradigm shift away from the World Health Organization (WHO) International Classification of Impairment, Disability and Handicap (ICIDH) framework to the WHO International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) framework has attempted to ‘move with the times’, and AMA6 has attempted to reach higher levels of internal consistency and interrater and intrarater reliability, the methods used to achieve a radical change in the Guides has come under criticism. It is quite difficult to distinguish between speculative and substantive criticism, because of paucity or obscurity in both source documents and subsequent commentary. A range of concerns have been identified.

In 2007 the UK established a new single equalities body, to bring together the existing equality Commissions dealing with gender, disability, and race and ethnicity into a Commission for Equality and Human Rights. The promotion and enforcement of ‘equality and diversity’ is one of the three duties of the new body. This paper briefly explores diversity in relation to the theory of gender equality and also examines developments in policy at the EU level, which has provided much of the impetus for change. Our focus is on the policy approach and the tensions that the policy documents reveal about the emphasis on equality and diversity approach, in particular the extent to which attention to gender issues may get lost in the diversity bundle, and the extent to which a focus on the individual may be strengthened over the group.

Three successive Labour governments have developed a range of work/family balance (WFB) policies, including child care services, leaves and flexible working hours, which have also become an increasingly coherent package. Drawing on Hall (1993), we explore the extent to which these represent a significant change at three levels: that of ideas (the goals of policy), mechanisms (the nature of the policy instruments), and settings (the fine-tuning of policy instruments). We examine how far the ideas driving the policy developments have been about the welfare of the family and its members, and the nature of the balance of continuity and change in policy instruments and settings, making some suggestions as to how this might be explained.